


Stay Alive

by strawberrylambda



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: M/M, Murder TW, Some other character mentions, Very Descriptive Gore, death tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 13:23:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11806854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberrylambda/pseuds/strawberrylambda
Summary: Sing me to sleep, keep me alive.--Dying wishes are overrated. Jughead just wants to be serenaded to the grave.Stay Alive - José González





	Stay Alive

**Author's Note:**

> so jug gets shot, probs by satan mother blossom idk, i didnt really think about it haha. some depression here and there, i think at one point jug alludes to wanting to commit suicide but its not very cheerful sorry its also all over the fucking place i h8 myself
> 
> we'll also pretend in this universe archie wrote stay alive because im a shit songwriter (stay alive is by jose gonzalez and its an amazing song listen to it)

Archie's red stained hands pressed and slid down Jughead's shirt, pushing down on the dark patch, as it spread and stained the rest of the fabric, cascading like a budding flower. Jughead gripped at Archie's arms, torn between a rough coughing and sobbing ripping through his chest. 

Here, on the riverside, where they would run away as children, surrounded by bellowing woods and moonlight, they'd run away. Here, years later, Archie would betray the children that lived inside them in favor of a love that wasn't real, and that day on the riverside, those kids cried, tore themselves from eachother and burned the bridge that connected them to the woods and the moonlight and their youth.

And today, it was Jughead who betrayed those children, nested deep in the two friends' souls. He might not have pulled the trigger, he might have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he knew somewhere along this now bloodstained riverbank, he did this. That whoever showed up here, put a barrel to his torso, and fired the shot, they were the bystander. Jughead told himself that he was the murderer, somehow. 

Archie's stomach lurched forward, at the injured form in front of him, watching the stream of red flow gently into the current beside him. He held Jughead as close as possible, keeping him in his skin as much as he was in his own. 

He wanted to shout, to yell for help. To cry, to wail, to panic, to mourn and carry Jughead to safety. And yet, his body would not budge. His legs wouldn't move, frozen to the earth below him. Jughead clawed at Archie's shoulders more. He wasn't trying to get up, he was trying to push Archie away.

Archie simply clung tighter. Every wrong move, every mistake and every unspoken word since the Fourth of July was running through him like Jug's blood flowing into Sweetwater River.

"I'm sorry." He choked out. He didn't even know if he meant it. Jughead simply pulled him closer, his head against Archie's panting chest. 

"I don't care anymore." Jug laughed.

He laughed. He was dying, and he laughed. Archie stared off into the rushing water. Jughead rarely laughed when he was alive, and he had the nerve to laugh when he was dying. 

"I-I have to-" Archie tried to reason with himself, more than Jug, to pull himself off the ground and drag him into town and save his life. But it wasn't happening. His hands too slick with Jughead's blood to keep his grip on him, his legs too cold to even get them halfway through the woods. 

"Stop." 

"What?"

"Stop talking."

Viscera painted the ground below them, quivering skin and bones beneath Archie began to give out. Jug could feel it. He could feel his insides start to become his outsides. The wound was only getting bigger and he began seeing dark spots, covering the sky, and the trees, and Archie. He felt dizzy and numb, but for the first time in what felt like forever ago, Jughead felt happy. He just needed a burger and he'd have probably felt elated; not that he could've really eaten it. His stomach was probably several inches detached from his esophagus at this point.

"No, no I need to get you hel-" Archie sputtered up again, gripping so hard at Jughead that Archie was starting to do more pain than the gaping wound in his belly.

"Just... sing. Don't talk. Sing." Jug didn't really know where that came from. His conscience would've told Arch to shut the fuck up and drag him away from here, and patch him up with sutures and apologies. But the dreamy, hazy version of him told Archie to sing to him instead, like a fucking idiot.

To his defense, Archie did stop talking. He was completely speechless. 

"You heard me red, sing to me. Sing anything. Anything at all. Remind me why we used to come out here." Jughead spat blood out onto the group on the hardest words in his mouth, barely able to make a coherent response.

Now Archie was actually crying, tears dropping into red pools below him. 

"I want the last thing I hear to be your favorite version of you. Your voice, not your crying." Jug said again, loosening his grip on Archie's biceps, before closing his eyes, expecting sweet symphonies as his last living moments. 

But if Jug was being honest with himself, he died a long time ago. He died when his mother took his sister and stormed away out of his life. He died when his dad decided the bottle was his new family, over his son. He died when Archie left his stranded on the Fourth of July, just to be thrown away like his parents did, like Riverdale did. 

Just because he was alive, didn't mean he was living.

_There's a rhythm in rush these days_  
_Where the lights don't move and the colors don't fade_  
_Leaves you empty with nothing but dreams_  
_In a world gone shallow  
In a world gone lean_

Archie's voice. His real voice. Jug felt high and powerful on it. His hums, his lyrics, they made him feel like living. 

Listening to Archie's soft singing, while broken and sad and off key, drowned out by sobs and heavy breaths, Jughead had decided it was his new favorite thing ever, moving Archie himself to his second favorite thing of all time.

_Sometimes there's things a man cannot know_  
_for gears won't turn and the leaves won't grow_  
_There's no place to run and no gasoline_  
_Engines won't turn and the train won't leave_  
_Engines won't turn and the train won't leave_

__

All of the warm and light feelings were replaced with heavy and almost suffocating weight over his whole body. Jughead nestled himself into Archie's chest, the pain almost completely subsided, listening to the melodic vibrations coming from his songs. 

_I will stay with you tonight_  
_Hold you close 'til the morning light_  
_In the morning watch a new day rise_  
_We'll do whatever just to stay alive_  
_We'll do whatever just to stay alive_

__

_Well the way I feel is the way I write_  
_It isn't like the thoughts of the man who lies_  
_There is a truth and it's on our side_  
_Dawn is coming_  
_Open your eyes_  
_Look into the sun as the new days rise_

_And I will wait for you tonight_  
_You're here forever and you're by my side_  
_I've been waiting all my life_  
_To feel your heart as it's keeping time_  
_We'll do whatever just to stay alive_

This was it. Jughead was alive. Archie made him feel alive. He knew what he wanted, and if only it didn't have to take a bullet for him to realize it. He loved him, and he knew Archie loved him back, from the way he held his reddened hand and how his voice cracked on the "tonight" in his song. 

For the first time in his life, Jughead was alive.


End file.
